I just Beat The GMAT!

GMAT: 720 (45q 44v) 94%

Greetings. I first discovered this forum in February and I have become an "I Just Beat the GMAT" addict. It is the first thing I look at everyday hoping to find some wisdom or hope for a great score. I would read each debrief and look forward to the day when I could write my own. So here it is. But before I go through my test preparation and the test itself, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed their stories to this forum and I sincerely hope that everyone gets into the school of their dreams (or at least a scholarship to that second choice). I also want to give kudos to all of the non-English speakers who have destroyed this test. This test is deliberately designed to keep you out of business school and I think it's amazing that you conquered it. Perhaps when you get your degree and become "important" you can change admissions criteria.

A little about me: I'm from NY and I just turned 28. I had a solid B average at a well known liberal arts college (economics major) which I graduated from in 2004. I sold cars for a year and then went to law school at a (recently demoted) 3rd tier school (LSAT: 164). In law school I earned honors and took a job with the government where I work in a business capacity. I bought the OG the week after I passed the New York bar in the fall of 2008 but did not start seriously studying until the spring of 2009. I studied pretty solidly for 2 months from May through June 2009 thinking I was going to apply last fall, however, an excellent opportunity came along at work that pushed my plans back a year so I restarted studying in February of this year.

Books:
OG (Official guide) 11th (great)
Barron's GMAT flash cards
REA GMAT book
Petersons GMAT book
McGraw Hill's GMAT book
Manhattan GMAT test simulation booklet (I know, this is really over the top but I wanted to be ready)
OG Quantitative and Verbal supplements (great)
Quantitative and Verbal Supplements (once again great book)


My study method was pretty simple. Admittedly, it probably was not the most effective use of my time. I started by reviewing all the notes from platinumgmat.com which is a great resource that hardly gets mentioned on this forum. It also has a great outline for the AWAs. Then I would just buy a book and do all the questions cover to cover. I never had any difficulties with CR or RC, however, I believed that the more of these I did the better I would do on the exam so I did all the questions. Because CR and RC were so easy for me I didn't mind doing them because I considered them a break from the real studying in SC and quantitative. In high school I did well in math (I'm sure we all did) so I was hoping for the best. I'm also a strong believer in what so many people have stated on this forum: "What one person can do, another can do." This means that if one person can do well on the GMAT then anyone else, with enough hard work, can do equally as well.

I kept notes/flashcards. As part of my studying I kept notes on all the math problems I thought would be useful to know. I've scanned them in and attached them below. Obviously they are for free for everyone to use and hopefully get a good score. They scanned sideways but you can rotate the view in whatever .pdf viewer you're using.

Studying gets harder. It was something I hadn't realized when I started. At first all the questions in the OG are easy and I breezed through them. When I got something wrong I would review the question and say, "whoops, I knew that!" But when I got up past question 150 things changed. Now when I got something wrong I had no idea how to attack the question - sometimes even after reading the answer. I think this is where the 700s are separated from the 600s. If you push on and persevere there is a reward at the end - trust me. If you want to absolutely torture yourself do the 198 math questions that are available for download on this site. I never finished those - I think I got to around 170 because the test was getting too close and I wanted to review my notes. But those are some intense questions and they are painful. I have a group of smart friends at work that I would frequently share these questions with. One of my friends has a Phd in geology from Columbia and the other got a 1600 on his SATs (a perfect score at the time). They both increased my abilities because sometimes it's easier to hear someone say it than it is to read that.

I did not take a formal course. I realized a long time ago that I do most of my learning on my own when I sit down with the material. Therefore, a course would be a waste of time and money. Obviously, some of the books I used were better than others. In my experience the only good books were the OGs. All the other books/flashcards I did were purely to learn and not go gage how I would do on the test. I believe that I learned something from each book but if you only had time to do one book it should certainly be the Official Guide.

Ten weeks ago I started my timed test practice. I did each of the below tests once a week (usually on Friday) and reviewed the test either that day or on Saturday. One of the reasons I am posting my scores, in the order they were taken, is to prove once and for all that the free practice tests out there are not true indicators of test day ability. As you can see I took GMATPrep 1 on April 23 and got a 710. I think this was a lucky score and I probably was testing more in the 690 range. Each of the following weeks I took a free test and scored significantly lower. This has also been confirmed to me by a friend who used to work for one of the major companies who was in the room when it was discussed openly how the free tests should be harder than the real thing in order to generate business. BUT, I don't care. I think these tests are great and I am very thankful for the opportunity to take them. Timing was always my weakest point and that's what these tests helped me with. Additionally I don't think the math problems are all that bad. On the other hand MANY of the verbal questions are HORENDOUS. As you will note on GMATPrep (and in all the OGs) I was doing very well in verbal. I believe that if you spend too much time away from OG verbal questions it's possible to actually lose skills.

GMATPrep 1: 710 (42q (12 wrong), 45v(6 wrong))
Knewton: 630 (36q 42v)
Manhattan: 650 (42q 37v)
CrackGmat: 600 (47q 19v)
Veritas: 640 (44q 35v)
Kaplan: 670 (44q 42v)
Petersons: No score given 32/37q 25/41v
GMATPrep 2: 730 (48q (9 wrong) 42v(6 wrong))
GMATPrep 1a: 750 (49q (12 wrong) 44v(6 wrong))
GMATPrep 2a: 750 (50q (8 wrong) 42v (7 wrong)
**Obviously in the GMATPrep retakes are a poor indicator of score because there are question repeats. This is even more so for me because I had done so many of the 198 math problems at this point.

The one part of my studying that I would probably change would be to purchase the Manhattan SC guide early on and work my way through that. It was about two weeks out when I realized how much more the verbal part of the test is worth than the quantitative. My advice: When you are 2 weeks out focus on verbal. One extra question right on SC can be equivalent to 3 or 4 in quantitative. I largely focused on SC for the last two weeks by making sure I had done every question in OG 11 & 12 and each question in the supplement twice.

I think my total study time for this test was enormous to say the least. I would put it at approximately 7 months of daily studying. Studying time was between 1 and 5 hours a day. I discovered a long time ago that I work better by studying less seven days in a row than studying a lot for four days in a row. The number of problems I did is easily over 2000 and probably closer to 3000. More than one people said to me, "but you studied for the bar, this should be nothing." Ooh, how VERY wrong. On my first day of studying for the bar with BARBRI (a bar prep company) they told us that the New York bar at my school had a 90% pass rate. I happened to be sitting in a row of 10 people so I looked down the row and thought, "huh, I only have to do better than one of these people." I knew all of them because we had had classes together for three years and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief because I saw four people that I knew I worked harder than. The GMAT is so different. Now imagine you're standing in a room of 100 people and you're told you have to beat 93 of them (I got in the 94th percentile). Now imagine that many of them majored in and worked in the exact topics that the GMAT is designed to test. It's a very different situation.

I also briefly want to mention the "haters." I work with a TON of MBAs and many of them encouraged me not to study at all because the test was "so easy." Yes, it is easy to get a 600. There were also a lot of people who were offended when I told them I was aiming for the 700s. They hadn't gotten in the 700s so why should I? Of course no one says this but that's what they're thinking. On some strange level studying hard for this test is almost considered cheating by people who got in the 600s. But it's not. If you stopped by Harvard and went to a random class and asked who studied they're all going to raise their hands. Anyways - that's my two cents.

Test Day: Pretty normal. I showed up about an hour early and they let me start immediately. I'm not disappointed in my score, however, I believe that I had the potential to do a little better on the math. My timing on the math was great all the way up through question 25, but somewhere after that the wheels fell off the wagon and I had to randomly guess on the last two questions. This was disappointing to me but it happens. My timing on verbal was excellent and I finished with about a minute to spare. I was not surprised with my score, but the break down was different than I had expected. I had expected a 48q and a 42v for a 720. Unfortunately, a lot of the test is luck and depends on what questions happen to roll at you on that day. This isn't quite as true for quant as it is for verbal. Most likely my 45 in quant means I got around 10 questions wrong out of the 37. However, my 44 in verbal means I got around 6 questions wrong out of 41. Take from this what you will but I am strong supporter in killing yourself in the verbal section even if that means quant slides a little. If I had to guess I most likely got 5 verbal questions wrong: 1 RC, 1 CR, and 3 SC.

I made a list of things to watch out for on the exam and here they are:

1. I will pace.
2. I will guess when the math takes too long.
3. I will not solve DS all the way when it is not necessary to do so.
4. I will expect to be panicked at some point during the test because everyone with a good score gets panicked at some point.
5. I will work deliberately and check my work and the givens again.
6. I will keep DS choices separate until it's time to examine them together.
7. I will remember many sentences have 2 errors and not get hung up if some idioms look equally valid (because they probably are).
8. I will remember to breathe. (A friend gave me this one. He said that during period of high stress focusing on breathing can help regulate mental acuity.)

Thank you for reading this. I apologize for any poor grammar or spelling. I would love to hear your comments about my prep. I would also appreciate any input on some great resources for the admissions process. I still have no idea where I want to apply but I look forward to the process. Once again good luck everyone!

hman768,

Thanks for the detailed debrief and congratulations on the great verbal score.

How would you rate the difficulty level of the questions in the quant section? Are the OG/Supplements good enough to do well on the quant section? Or do you feel that some areas that are tested on the real GMAT such as Statistics (standard deviation, mean, median, range etc.), Coordinate Geometry, Number properties (remainders) are not covered adequately in the guides? Any pointers would be helpful.

Thanks!

Secondinnings:
First, I'll say that the test was really a blur. I couldn't tell you any of the questions even if I was allowed to. I believe that the OG and supplements are good enough to do well on the quant. I did all the questions twice and went over the notes I attached in my debrief above several times. I would attribute my decrease in quant score to careless mistakes. I made many careless mistakes during my practice exams and worked very hard to decrease them. Most likely, outside the timed stressful environment of the actual GMAT I would have gotten 5 more questions right in quant than I did.
Therefore, to answer your question more completely I believe that I was fully prepared for the test. I don't think there were any questions that popped up that were truly out of nowhere. In fact, I remember when I went to the bathroom during the break that I felt confident that I had done very well on quant - better than I had done in reality.
I didn't mention in my debrief why I didn't use the Manhattan books. I think it was because I found my way to this forum after that stage of my studying was over. If I had read about how much people like them before I started studying I would have used them to lay down my foundation. But because I was already at the "practice" stage of my preparation I didn't feel the need/have the time to start over. Good luck!

hman768 wrote:Secondinnings:
First, I'll say that the test was really a blur. I couldn't tell you any of the questions even if I was allowed to. I believe that the OG and supplements are good enough to do well on the quant. I did all the questions twice and went over the notes I attached in my debrief above several times. I would attribute my decrease in quant score to careless mistakes. I made many careless mistakes during my practice exams and worked very hard to decrease them. Most likely, outside the timed stressful environment of the actual GMAT I would have gotten 5 more questions right in quant than I did.
Therefore, to answer your question more completely I believe that I was fully prepared for the test. I don't think there were any questions that popped up that were truly out of nowhere. In fact, I remember when I went to the bathroom during the break that I felt confident that I had done very well on quant - better than I had done in reality.
I didn't mention in my debrief why I didn't use the Manhattan books. I think it was because I found my way to this forum after that stage of my studying was over. If I had read about how much people like them before I started studying I would have used them to lay down my foundation. But because I was already at the "practice" stage of my preparation I didn't feel the need/have the time to start over. Good luck!

Gr8 score buddy...best of luck for your applications.

Can please share the difficulty level of verbal questions in actual test ?

GMAT verbal has gotten tougher. The RC passages have gotten denser, everything is trickier. I took GMAT three times attempting to break 700. March 09, April 09 and last month. Obviously I didn't do any debrief because I didn't break 700. I scored 41 when I first took GMAT in March 09 and came 10 points shy of 700. The last two times, my V score was in the high 30's and regressed while the Q section was easier for me because Q is something you can really work on, so I had marginal improvements there. However, although I still studied for the Verbal, the extra studying didn't compensate for the increase in difficulty and my overall score stayed the same or went down. The Q has stayed roughly the same, the V has not.

When I got the 41 the first time, I came out thinking that it was similar to the level of difficulty in GMATPrep. I definitely didn't get that feeling the last two times and thought it was even harder than MGMAT. You get a lot of questions where you read a passage so dense, you just got done reading it and all the answer choices sound legitimate to you. Or you get a CR stimulus, you read the answer choices and you're done reading E and none of them stand out as the answer. This just kills time. One of the RC passages in June was just on a higher level of anything I've ever encountered in all the MGMAT prep materials and test and definitely GMATPrep. GMAC needs to revise their GMATPrep to reflect the V sections they are throwing out nowadays.

@hman768 : You seem to be very comfortable with RC and CR. The fact that you are a lawyer and prepared for LSAT, no surprise. But If I were to ask you the apporach for RC , what will you say ? If you could share in detail your approach please.

Thanks.

nikhilkatira: I considered the difficulty of the verbal section to be on par with the OGs and GMATPrep. This is self-evident because I got a 710 on GMATPrep 1 and a 730 on GMATPrep 2 and then a 720 on the real GMAT. Everything was very on par with what I expected.

GMATMadeEasy: Sure, I'd be happy to explain how I do RC. I would love to say there's some trick I read in a book but for better or worse it is just natural. I always start by reading the passage completely. I've heard it's best to read the question first but I've found that that distracts me from the passage and because I know I'll have to answer 3 or 4 more questions I try to get a full understanding of the passage. I sometimes read the passage twice because I didn't comprehend the whole thing the first time. I never take notes - it seems like it takes too much time and there's a good chance that any notes I take will end up being a waste of time because there won't be a question on that topic. I then read the question and the answers. If I'm lucky I will know the answer before I even read the answer options. That is to say the question has an actual predictable answer. If the answer does not immediately pop out at me I work backwards and eliminate the answers that are clearly wrong. (Before I start the sections I always jot A B C D E on my page so I can make X's below the answers I know are wrong) Usually I can eliminate 3 answers very quickly and only 2 will remain. Then I take these two answers and go back through the passage to find the very specific piece of information they're referring to. It was a MAJOR break through for me when I realized that every RC question has an answer that is LITERALLY IN the passage. From there I figure out which answer is wrong. Honestly, this can be quite the process. I often have to go back and look at the first 3 answers I crossed out because I can't get the other 2 to work. However, it always works out and I have that "ah-ha!" moment where the right one jumps out at me. I hope that helps. I just want to repeat this one sentence because it changed the way I thought about doing these questions: It was a MAJOR break through for me when I realized that every RC question has an answer that is LITERALLY IN the passage.
If you're looking for a time saver my one tip would be that for any "what's the main purpose of this passage" question the answer is usually in the first or last sentence. Good luck!

congratulations dude!

@hman768 : A BIG thanks for the detailed explanation. And I agree with ah-ha moment you might have, I am just in search of that . On a serious note, if I were to analyze further your approach, how long on an average you take for a passage of three paragraphs (a bit complex) to read once or twice before you start hitting the question. And did you ever gather the data how long per question it takes (main point , infer, detail) . Also, do you read for passage structure, logical flow etc or it is brutal force that kills the enemy . Could you share in detail. Though I understand that different methods suit different people

My issue is , this used to be my apporach and with this approach I get good result too but then I take longer to read/comprehend the passage .I am intentionally trying to train and experiment with fast readding and see if gain the speed keeping accuracy intact. Tough job !!!

Because CR and RC were so easy for me I didn't mind doing them because I considered them a break from the real studying in SC and quantitative.

This is amazing. When I see RC, I gather all the courage to attack it and do only when in best stae otherwise, it sucks big time.Hence, my questions to you .

First, a quick update. I got my official score and everything above is correct. I also got my AWA - 6.0. The only practice I did for these was to do each of them once under real conditions. I have taken many tests on computers before and I felt confident that I could do these. Additionally, not to sound pompous, but the sample 6.0s that are featured on this website are simple and easy to emulate. If you use the outline on platinumgmat.com you should be able to get a 6.0. Also, I forget where I read this but I think that length is very important. The longer the better. If you start running out of things to say just keep saying "because" and filling in the rest. I think this portion of the test is designed to elminate 2 types of people: Non-native English speakers and those who do not know how to type. I don't necessarely argee with the philosophy behind this but there it is.
GMATMadeEasy: I do not have specific timing data on RC or CR. However, I believe that I take just about the same length of time on every question on Verbal (1 minute 49 seconds per question). Therefore when I do a RC section I generally hoped for more questions following the reading. For example I believe that most RC have 3 questions. Therefore my guess is that reading the paragraph takes about 2-3 minutes and then I answer each question in about 45 seconds. A friend of mine that took the GMAT said that his instructor told him that it is only necessary to read each paragraph once and that you should never look back through the paragraph for the answer. I think this is wrong. I read the paragraph quickly enough that I would know it's general meaning and have an idea of where to begin when looking for the answer to each qeustion.
I do NOT thing about any of the silly things the books recommend while reading a passage (structure, main point, inferences, logical flow, blah blah). I think this is silly and I can't imagine a larger waste of time. I only think about these things if the question asks about it (e.g. what is the purpose of this passage?)

hma768 -

Congratulation on the feat, good luck with the rest of your application process.

I do NOT thing about any of the silly things the books recommend while reading a passage (structure, main point, inferences, logical flow, blah blah). I think this is silly and I can't imagine a larger waste of time. I only think about these things if the question asks about it (e.g. what is the purpose of this passage?)

I think this comment is a good demonstration on how everyone approaches "Reading Comprehension" differently, and how strategies are difficult to employ for this section.

@hman768 : I would assume that you are naturally very good at reading fast and understand the content quickly. You are natural at RC I beleive.

My issue is : If I read carefully and take up to 5 minutes, I do very good in RC but as soon as I reduce the reading timing, I decrease accuracy. I am experimenting though and trying to figure out what works best for me.

Anyways, leave your comment for CR as well, that is how you approach in detail.

I still have to gather all motivation when it comes to doing RC .

Thanks GMATMadeEasy. I don't think I'm a "natural" at reading. I think that it came from 3 years of reading law books for 5 hours a day. But thanks.

Critical Reasoning: Largely the same as RC. I read the paragraph first and hopefully I can guess what the answer is without even reading the answer choices. Once again, I never write anything down. I never think about the structure, I never do anything just read what it says. I suppose I naturally evaluate what it says - does it make sense? Is there something missing? At this point I read the answer choices. As I said before I write A B C D E on the top of my page and I cross out the answer choices that are clearly wrong. Usually there are 2 or 3 that don't make any sense at all and are unrelated to the paragraph. For example, if the question asks why a company isn't running efficiently and one of the answers is "because the employees are stealing" I quickly cross that one out because it doesn't have anything to do with efficiency. When I get down to 2 answers I always think to myself, "ok, the answer is here somewhere, it is up to me to figure out why one of these is wrong." So from there I look for the wrong choice. This goes for RC as well - frequently I never find what I could consider a clear "right" answer. Often I find 4 wrong answers and one that doesn't seem right or wrong so I go with that one. It's a scary way to do the test but I think that's on purpose. Good luck!